MUMBAI: Mobile wallet company, FreeCharge, has partnered with Mumbai Traffic Police for collection of traffic fines in a cashless manner through the Freecharge wallet, said the company in a statement to the press today.

The digital payments company said that close to 500 e-challan devices have been rolled out to various traffic chowkies across the city. Once an offender is caught violating any rule, an e-challan will be generated against the vehicle registration number. The challan would also be sent to person’s mobile phone immediately. The user can log on to www.mumbaipolice.net, enter their challan or vehicle number and pay using FreeCharge on the payments page.

In a statement shared earlier, Mumbai traffic police said that it expects an annual increase of 8 lakh challans, from the existing 22 lakhs. Such an effort will also help them in identifying and taking action against repeat offenders.

"We are pleased to partner with Mumbai Traffic Police in their pursuit of making the process of collecting fines cashless. Digital payments make the process faster and more efficient. Such partnerships are in line with our objective to make FreeCharge an everyday, everywhere option for our users,” said Govind Rajan, CEO, FreeCharge.

FreeCharge is also in discussion with police authorities in other cities to enable traffic challans to be paid via FreeCharge. As per publicly available information, the amount of traffic challans in metros is sizeable – Delhi pays about Rs 140 crores annually, Mumbai about Rs 100 crores, while Bengaluru collects Rs 70 crores. Even smaller cities like Ahmedabad collect nearly Rs 17 Crores annually as traffic fines.